(CNN) – The new head of the World Bank is Dr. Jim Kim. The former Dartmouth College president and medical anthropologist is the first person to lead the institution who has been directly involved in global health and development issues. But he also has much less of a finance background than previous World Bank presidents.

"A lot of what the president of the Bank does is to look at spreadsheets and make decisions about, you know, interest rates and rates of return and rates of discounts. A lot of it is finance, " says Lawrence MacDonald with the Center for Global Development. [2:26]

Kim has had experience working in Haiti and that's why Non-Governmental Organziations have high hopes.

"You've had the IMF bailing out Europe. Now, obviously, the World Bank doesn't work in the same way as the IMF, but poor countries need to be bailed out too. They need a reliable source of aid, and they need a reliable source of proper advice to be able to help them move forward and overcome all these obstacles that they keep being hit with," says Elizabeth Stuart with Oxfam International. [2:55]